Epic Games, the people who make Unreal Tournament and Gears of War, could eventually bring Gears of War to your iPhone or Android, the future destination of big budget, "AAA" games.

So says futurist and Epic Games VP Mark Rein, who is a big proponent of iPhone and iPad gaming. Epic's Unreal Engine is already running on versions of the device in prototype form, so to hear Rein say that Gears of War could eventually go mobile is not much of a surprise. Epic's interest in iAds and the possibility of the bombastic shooter going "download-only" might, however, be less expected of the company.

Rein also said that Epic is "definitely going to experiment with micro-transactions and lower-price games" at the GameHorizon Conference 2010, according to a report from GamesIndustry.biz.

It certainly doesn't sound like the developer is moving away from consoles and powerful PCs, just expanding its reach to those other multi-million selling platforms.

Having played with the Unreal Engine prototype on an iPhone myself, it's not that unreasonable to consider playing a good-looking shooter on the device, even a whittled down Unreal Tournament. But a fully-fledged game a la Gears of War or Bulletstorm? We'll see about that, Mark!